First, I want to make clear that I am not advocating any “black hat” technique or trying to “game” the search engines. The major search engines have stated that they can and will pull the plug on this tag should they see abuse of usage of this tag and that content between the two pages that you use the canonical link element is very similar.
So I would first start off with the content on the landing pages. How similar is the content on all military type landing pages to the website home page or internal page? Since this is a targeted campaign I would guess the content will not be similar to the home page but what about an internal web page that talks about the G.I. Bill or the student in the Military? If they do not currently have one I would make a web page with similar copy and have it linked throughout the web site so the major search engines can find it.
Next, I would put the canonical link element on all of my military targeted landing pages to show the canonical or “preferred” page I want major search engines to notice. By doing this all link popularity will transfer to the internal web page and thus you get the SEO value and still have all tracking in place so your media department or agency can do what they do best!
Let’s take a look at a good example where this can be used.
One of the sites we have at Bisk Education is http://www.usanfranonline.com. We offer a certificate in supply chain management and we have created a “form” or landing page at http://usanfranonline.com/form/ntis/form/. This page has received a few quality back links which has translated to a PR of 3. So I would suggest or in this case plan on doing is to put the canonical tag on my landing page and point it to http://www.usanfranonline.com/online-certificates/supply-chain-management.aspx which is our page that talks about the program in detail. I plan on doing this within the next few days and will update all on the results but I am confident that it will transfer the link juice in time.
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